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Food
Food Thursday
22Mar
What Do You Do When a Neighbor Wants Some of Your Raw Milk for Her Child?
Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 07:19PM I was catching up about a week ago with a neighbor I hadn’t spoken with for a couple months because we had both been in winter hibernation mode. When I asked about her three-year-old son, she shook her head. “It’s been one thing after another, sore throats and colds. We’ve been in and out of the doctor’s office.”
I inquired if she had ever thought of feeding him raw milk to build up his immune system, and she said no, but she was open to anything that might help. “I’ll pick some up at Whole Foods,” she said.
I explained that that wouldn’t work, since we were in Massachusetts, not California, and then offered to get her some on my next trip to the New Hampshire farm where I obtain mine, in a few days. She seemed appreciative. (Interestingly, not many people I meet in the Boston area, including those who are otherwise very health conscious, know much about raw milk and how limited its availability is.)
So I picked up my milk a couple days ago, but on my way back home, I got to thinking. What if the milk doesn’t agree with her son or, worse yet, makes him ill…would I be responsible?
Then, as if the timing was planned, I received an email from Mary McGonigle-Martin, which is very similar her March 20 comment on my December posting, “E.coli and Raw Milk: A Family Web of Intrigue and Resentment”.
That posting stirred a flurry of comments about the situation involving a California girl, Lauren Herzog, who became sick after consuming raw milk at the home of her father’s girlfriend, Chelsea Higholt.
The comments on that posting have continued.
In early March, Chelsea posted a long comment, objecting to assertions from someone named “Michael”, whose comments I can’t find. It seems that Michael criticized Chelsea, much like Melissa Herzog originally criticized Chelsea, for serving raw milk to Lauren.
In her March 20 posting, Mary McGonigle-Martin lucidly describes how her son, Chris, became sick and was taken to the same California hospital as Lauren Herzog last September:
“Words cannot really describe what we experienced watching our son hooked up to machines that allowed him to live as his body slowly recovered.
”He was on a ventilator for a total of nine days and kidney dialysis for about two weeks. He had tubes coming out of both sides of his chest for two weeks to drain fluid that had built up in his body. On the right side of his upper chest was a central line for feeding him, drawing blood and injecting medication. On the left side of his chest was a catheter for kidney dialysis.
”Imagine that your child is in this condition with his arms tied to the bed so he can't pull the tubes out of his mouth or nose. This is what could happen if your child is contaminated with the e-coli bacteria.”
Well, I thought, imagine my neighbor’s child “is in this condition.” It probably goes without saying that after reading Mary’s terrible story, I decided not to give my neighbor any raw milk for her son. Instead, I decided to encourage her to buy it herself from a farm in the area.
I take several messages from this ongoing, and passionate, discussion. For one, I think it’s necessary to respect the power of what I might term “wild food” like raw milk. For whatever reasons, it can make people sick, especially children and others whose immune systems might not be fully operational. Just like wild grown herbs and plants and fruit juice can make people ill. Of course, processed and cultivated foods (everything from tacos to spinach) can make people terribly ill, and kill them, though here the causes are more likely man-made than nature-made.
That leads to my second point, which is that these wild foods must be handled with care, especially when it comes to serving them to others who may or may not appreciate their power. As enthusiastic as I might be about the benefits of raw milk, I need to restrain myself in handing it out to others. I’ve taken to warning guests in my home who are interested in raw milk that they should try it first in small quantities; most are scared off by my cautionary words, since they were already nervous from a lifetime of pro-pasteurization propaganda. I feel badly, but then I realize they’re probably best off making such decisions for themselves, not at my urging.
All of which takes me to a third point, which is that the decision to consume such wild foods is likely best made as part of a larger decision about taking responsibility for one’s health. And appreciating that with such responsibility comes risk.
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Reader Comments (8)
"One of the physicians stated that until the results came back, the boy was not to be given antibiotics. In the case of O157:H7, they learned later, antibiotics often caused a mass kill of the bacteria and a mass release of a toxin known as Shiga, which could shut down a child's renal system."
I think that information shoudl be more widely known.
I think of wild foods as actual wild foods - weeds and "seed themself" plants growing in fields and woods, as well as game animals. Native and introduced plants gone wild. I make pesto from yellow dock, a version of spinach pie from dandelion, put plantain in salads, harvest stinging nettles in May with eager anticipation of this wonderful rich plant, dig burdock root for pickling and stirfrys, look for purslane as an omega 3 supplement, pick flowers of all sorts to add to salads. Wild garlic and garlic mustard will be up soon - yum.
Up in this area, (Michigan - 42N17) eating wild food is amazingly safe. Nearly all the poisonous green plants taste really bad. Good tip off not to eat them. If you stay out of swamps and marshes, know poison hemlock at all its stages (it can cause paralysis and swelling so quickly just tasting it can be dangerous - but it smells bad and totally unlike wild carrot which it might be confused with early on) don't pick near train tracks or powerlines (they spray them heavily at times), you can pretty much safely taste green things and figure out what you can eat.
Mushrooms, berries, different story. I don't randomly taste either. Mushrooms are perhaps the most dangerous wild food in this area. Even a small amount of the wrong mushroom can cause permanent and sometimes fatal liver damage.
My first time in a rain forest I had no idea what to eat - and didn't feel safe trying as the plants are in a whole different relationship in the jungle and wilds. The further south you go, the more poisonous plants you have to know before venturing out to feast in the wild.
I teach people to eat wild plants. I don't think of it as very dangerous - around here. Interesting fact -- if you look at a list of poisonous plants, nearly every plant on the list is a house plant. Why? Poisonous plants tend to look exotic with unusual coloring. Tip off for us. Attractive as house plants.
The New York Times had a story about someone poisoned by datura - the moonflower. They had picked some leaves with their salad accidently. Have you ever seen this plant? It is so strange looking people love to put it in their yards. The leaves, the lower, teh seed pods - really weird. Another caution - never eat strange looking plants unless you know the pant and if it is safe. Purple dots, white berries, all mean caution.
So with certain cautions and caveats, wild food is very safe - as I have named one of my classes - there really is a "free lunch". We need to feel more comfortable grazing in our yards, our fields and forests just like we have for the last 10,000 and more years.
It is were our food and our medicine has always come from.
I warn pregnant women and children when I serve raw milk products. They are the most vulnerable. I don't warn them about dandelions though.
I understand the fear and the tremendous sense of responsibility in making food choices for children. However, one must keep in mind that NOT giving children raw milk also has consequences. In reacting to these inevitable cases of food poisoning, people fail to take a long term view. We need to consider the long term health consequences when a large population consumes raw milk, rather than focusing on the short term negative consequences to a few unfortunate individuals. This is no different than how we evaluate and accept the risks of prescription drugs.
I am convinced that over the long term, a population that consumers raw milk will enjoy greater wellness, longer lifespans, and a lower death rate from things like the flu, than a population that does not, even accounting for producer mistakes that lead to occasional raw milk outbreaks.
As far as the question of feeding neighbors...if you are comfortable feeding spinnach salads to your guests, then you should be comfortable feeding them raw milk as well. Either way, if your guests get sick, it is the producer's falt, not yours. Unless of course you obtain your raw milk illegally. Then I believe the fault for illness does fall, at least partially, to you.
I think the best approach is to tell people that the milk you are serving is raw, and to suggest that anyone who wishes to be careful, esp children, can cut their risks buy populating their guts with something like yogurt for a period of time before consuming. It is true that in those few instances of outbreaks, the pathogens only seem to affect new consumers and children.
But again, any discussion of the dangers of raw milk needs to be contained within a larger discussion of it's benefits. To do so otherwise is irresponsible, in my opinion.
The young boy’s sickness described by David, however tragic, in no way represents the effects of drinking raw milk (questions about the true cause of his illness aside) any more than sickness from e-coli tainted spinach represents the effects of eating spinach.
At the bottom of raw milk fears is the seriously flawed belief that we can somehow protect ourselves from every negative potential. Adopting that attitude makes every sickness a tragedy, and more important, an excuse for hyper-reaction.
Optimal protection from illness comes from instilling radiant health. The long-term consequences of ignoring that wonderful fact are in evidence all around us: Heart disease and cancer, rare at the turn of the century, now strike huge numbers of Americans. One person in three suffers from allergies. One in ten will have ulcers. One in five is mentally ill. Digestive disorders, diabetes, and arthritis and other degenerative diseases are at epidemic levels. To avoid the foods that would reverse that trend because of the potential of an illness related to them is a mistake. Similarly, it is a mistake to avoid promoting those foods.
I do understand that, with media hype about illness, and cultural (and medical system!) ignorance about health, sharing a glass of raw milk might give one pause. But that pause should be never more than that--a pause--it should never be a stopper. Life decisions are all made on a risk/benefit analysis. In the case of health-giving foods like raw milk, that’s an easy analysis to make.
Hand that raw milk over, and attach to it a healthy dose of heartfelt, compassionate, life-enhancing education.
What about all the people who could have benefited by local oganic crops? Don't they count in his estimation? Apparently not.
We're just so often worrying about the wrong things. It is HARD to buck that training and fear response.
Informed choice -- I wish it was more common.
Ironically, I write this as I suffer from my first health setback since starting to drink real milk last summer; the flu has taken hold of me. My partner had it and was really knocked for a loop. For me, it has been more of an annoyance, not full-blown flu misery. Before last summer, it was always the other way around. I drink raw milk, she doesn't. Just some food for thought...
I rarely post anywhere, but felt compelled to share today’s experience with you. I’ll start with a bit of background to bring you up to speed. I run a small (very small) Children’s Ag Program near Lake Berryessa, California. We currently have only 2 does in milk but share the pasteurized goat milk with family and friends. We have never sold raw or pasteurized milk or products in any form. I do teach children to milk, pasteurize, make cheeses, cajeta, ice cream, etc. but they are for their own personal consumption. I have also “given” milk to others to feed their goat kids, to make their own cheese etc. I even make cheese to share and give to friends and family and take to potlucks etc. (Gosh.. I must be a real criminal)
Today a state Ag inspector and two county officials show up and scare the bee-jesus out of me. First they accuse me of selling products and milk, then explain that even “giving milk products away” is illegal in California. Now everything is pasteurized, but it is illegal to share milk products in any form! They explained it was even ILLEGAL to give it to my own children if they did not live under my roof! I can’t even take a lasagna dish to my grown sons home without risk of being fined, arrested and or jailed! This is OUTRAGIOUS!!!! Now let me assure you that this did not come about because anyone got sick from our products in anyway.. nor have there ever been complaints about our products… I am very careful about making any dairy product and even more careful about whom I share it with.
I understand the need to license dairies, but this is over the top! To meet the requirements for a food handlers permit, milk handlers permit, pasteurizer operators permit, a dairy license, and a commercial kitchen is undue punishment! This is ridiculous! Heck, someone want to explain this to me? This is a hobby for me and an opportunity to teach city kids about agriculture and real foods. How can it be illegal to give something away or take a casserole to a friend’s house?
Robin
Kiddin’ Korral Manager